A new pricing survey by BigHand shows that 31% of law firms – which had scrutinised their data – found that AI had ‘improved profitability per matter’.

This is presumably because AI is helping to reduce time spent on non-billable work, allowing more profits to be realised for each client project. Plus, where a matter is on a fixed fee AI acceleration provides a healthy ‘tech dividend’.

Also, 30% of firms saw that AI is helping to drive increased matter throughput – again a notable boost to firms that are able to benefit from more rapidly completed projects.

BigHand data – note: some firms may not have replied in the affirmative here simply because they are not tracking the data needed to answer these questions.

However, there are several other factors here that paint a more complex financial scenario for some law firms:

There was also a reduction in billable hours for certain tasks – 27%

And a reduced reliance on manual tasks – 31%

For firms that are wholly wedded to the traditional billable hour model, then such figures are not that welcome. For those that can navigate the new AI-influenced pricing environment, then the above is also good news.…

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